Trump tariffs will make everyone poorer. Make America "grieve" again! "Brother can you spare a dime?"

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Justin Wolfers:

Dr. Wolfers is a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan.

Trump tariffs will hurt. A lot. By my calculations, this round of tariffs may be 50 times as painful as the ones Donald Trump instituted in his first term. That means they are going to reshape your life in much more fundamental ways.

To illustrate how, let’s look at a prosaic example: your washing machine. In 2018, Mr. Trump’s relatively modest tariffs caused washing machine prices to rise by nearly $100. As a result, many families elected to stick with their aging machines longer than they otherwise would have. But that choice incurred a new set of costs: late-night thuds from unbalanced loads, wads of scrunched cloth still dripping wet after a cycle and higher energy and water bills.

In other words, the total cost of a tariff isn’t just what comes out of your checking account. The time you spend to rearrange the stuff in your washer is a cost. The time you spend wringing out sopping wet T-shirts is a cost. Tariffs are costly not just because they raise prices but because they force you to make different decisions that will extract a different kind of cost from you over time.

Small tariffs create small problems. Big tariffs create huge ones. Take Mr. Trump’s 25 percent tariff on vehicles, which is expected to raise their prices by roughly $4,000. Many families, like mine, will probably decide not to buy a second car. That creates far bigger problems than an aging washer. Now, we’re constantly juggling how to get our kids to all their activities, and ourselves to work, with only one set of wheels.

And it’s not just cars. These are across-the-board tariffs, so they will distort virtually every purchase you make. In each case you’ll have to stop your baked-in calculations, recalibrate and find a way to make do — perhaps substituting frozen vegetables for fresh vegetables, a less effective medication for a higher-priced import, or corn syrup for sugar. And in each case, you’re worse off.

By the way, tariffs don’t distort just your buying decisions; they also distort what businesses make. Just as tariffs lead you to buy less desirable alternatives, they lead businesses to channel labor and capital into less desirable — that is, less productive — activities.

The tariffs announced on Wednesday are roughly 10 times as high as those of most other industrialized countries, and higher than the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs (of Great Depression fame).

Trump’s latest tariffs will lead folks to rethink not only whether to replace their washing machines — as they did in 2018 — but also their dryers, refrigerators, stoves, groceries, clothes, cars and even everyday essentials.

By the way, tariffs don’t distort just your buying decisions; they also distort what businesses make. Just as tariffs lead you to buy less desirable alternatives, they lead businesses to channel labor and capital into less desirable — that is, less productive — activities.

The tariffs announced on Wednesday are roughly 10 times as high as those of most other industrialized countries, and higher than the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs (of Great Depression fame).

Trump’s latest tariffs will lead folks to rethink not only whether to replace their washing machines — as they did in 2018 — but also heir dryers, refrigerators, stoves, groceries, clothes, cars and even everyday essentials. Many of the substitutions we’ll make will be quite painful. If a 1 percent tariff leads you to switch from real guacamole to a pea-based alternative, then you really didn’t care about guac all that much. But if it takes a 20 percent tariff to get you to switch, that’s a sure sign that going without the real thing is a serious hardship.

And so, this is why higher tariffs generate a far greater amount of pain. These forces aren’t independent of each other. They interact. Or in math, they multiply, which means their costs rise in the square of the tariff rate. That leads to some pretty painful arithmetic.

The average tariff rate was about 1.5 percent just before Trump’s election in 2016. He subsequently raised tariffs on steel, aluminum, washing machines, solar panels and many goods from China, but left much of the rest of the economy untouched. All told, by 2019, he roughly doubled the tariff rate, to around 3 percent — and so effectively quadrupled whatever pain the 2016, tariffs were causing. (Yes, two times two is four.)

President Joe Biden kept some of these tariffs, but Trump’s latest round pushes our current rate to around 15 times its 2016, level, and so squaring that, it’s 225 times more painful.

That’s more than 50 times as large as the cost of Trump’s first-term tariff increase.

Perhaps voters pulled the lever for Trump with warm memories of the good economic times. But the reality of his first term is that there was a lot more tariff talk than action. They were barely more than a bump in the road. This time, they’re a mountain. And so the impact will be more like a crash than last time’s comfortable jolt.💢

Brother Can you spare a dime? 

Freedom of the Press in danger! High on the Trump authoritarian agenda to undermine and discredit without cause

Echo letter from the Editor-in-Chief of The Dolphin, a Le Moyne student newspaper: "The Danger ⚠ of Trump’s Barring Media Outlets From the White House". By Carly Nicolai

On Februry 12, 2025, the Trump Administration barred a reporter from the Associated Press (AP) from an Oval Office event, and has since restricted AP reporters from attending events and conferences. 

This is on the basis of the AP refusing to comply with Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America in its stylebook. (OMG 😒😦....a petty retalitatory stupidity, defies explanation❗)

White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich claimed that the outlet’s refusal to use the updated name for the gulf “exposes the Associated Press’ commitment to misinformation.” He also explained that while the First Amendment may protect their freedom of speech, “it does not ensure their privilege of unfettered access to limited spaces, like the Oval Office and Air Force One.”

The AP is no longer alone, though, with a HuffPost reporter being removed from the AirForce One press pool after questioning Vice President JD Vance’s comments about judges not being allowed to override the executive branch. Other outlets barred by the White House include Reuters and Der Tagesspiegel (a German newspaper).

On Feb. 26, the AP, Reuters, and Bloomberg released a joint statement stressing the importance of the press’ ability to report accurately on the presidency, stating that “it is essential in a democracy for the public to have access to news about their government from an independent, free press. 

We believe that any steps by the government to limit the number of wire services with access to the president threatens the principle of a free press as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.”

The AP filed a lawsuit against three administration officials, claiming it to be a violation of free speech, but on February 24, U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden refused the AP’s request to immediately restore their White House access. However, Judge McFadden has not officially ruled on the matter yet, claiming that more exploration is required before he can make a final decision.

The same day, the Trump administration released a statement claiming access to the press pool to be “a privilege granted to journalists, not a legal right.” 

It goes on to defend the barring of the AP, stating: “We stand by our decision to hold the Fake News accountable for their lies, and President Trump will continue to grant an unprecedented level of access to the press. This is the most transparent Administration in history.” (Of course the source of real "fake" news is Fox Fake News❗)

Trump’s decision to remove certain (without cause) media outlets from the press pool breaks decades of bipartisan precedent, usurping the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), which has been the group determining which reporters participate in the daily pool for about 111 years. Concerns have been raised over the administration’s prevention of well-established organizations from viewing the president’s activities up-close and asking him potentially challenging questions.

The WHCA released a statement condemning the president’s recent actions, claiming that “in a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps,” and that the WHCA exists to “ensure consistent professional standards and fairness in access on behalf of all readers, viewers and listeners.”

In short: while Trump’s decision to remove certain media outlets from the press pool may not be legally reprehensible, it is dangerous in terms of how and where U.S. citizens get information about presidential activity. The AP is often regarded as one of the United States’ most reliable journalistic sources, to the extent that other established outlets such as Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, NYT, and others use it in their own reporting.

In fact, over 40 outlets of varying political leanings signed a letter coordinated by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press imploring the White House to restore the AP to the press pool. The letter claims the decision violates First Amendment principles, adding that “the pool system can only work… if the routine daily decisions about who is in the room, in the gaggle, or on the plane, are divorced from editorial considerations.”

They also stated that “the many news organizations reporting on the White House have varied editorial approaches but all have the same collective interest in ensuring that no one is excluded based on their constitutionally protected choices,” pointing out the fact that the president has perhaps singled out the AP as a news outlet due to the conception that it is more left-leaning.

An attorney representing the AP in the lawsuit explained that the issue is not Trump’s dislike of the organization, but his prevention of its involvement at all: “We’re not arguing that the president of the United States has to answer The Associated Press’ questions. The issue is that once he lets the press pool in he can’t say, ‘I don’t like you. You’re fake news. Get out.’”

One does not have to like what a media outlet publishes or the questions their reporters ask, but only in the most extreme cases (causing legitimate harm) should they be silenced or de-platformed. The AP’s choice to call the body of water in question the Gulf of Mexico does not constitute a hate crime, and additionally, is actually accurate in terms of what the majority of the world calls the gulf, as Trump’s executive order changes the name only in the United States.

The president can ignore the AP, but sabotaging their long-held position within the press pool over their refusal of a name change sets a troubling precedent. Ultimately, the AP was punished for not conforming to Trump’s arbitrary decision, which appears to be a disproportionate reaction to the severity of the AP’s “crime.”

The implications of this decision are dangerous. If Trump can punish media outlets for challenging his presidential actions and/or asking difficult questions, then the free press is ultimately threatened, potentially creating a version of journalism where reporters are intimidated into silence and/or conformity. Without a breadth of perspectives from these media outlets, the public is put at an extreme disadvantage, preventing the populace from understanding what is going on in government and how such affairs impact them.

Republicans must reject Trump stupid tariffs and help restore confidence in the U.S. economy

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who served as vice president during Trump's first term, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, "The Trump Tariff Tax is the largest peacetime tax hike in U.S. history."

In facr, the tariffs were almost 10 times the size of those imposed during the Trump-Pence administration and would "cost American families over $3,500 per year."

'Bad Idea' 😕😢: Republicans Raise Alarm Over Donald Trump's Tariffs⚠️❗

#StupidTariffs harm middle class people and those who survive on fixed incomes because the increased taxes caused by tariffs outpace the financial ability for average Americans to keep sustainable revenue.  

Americans will hold back spending because of economc uncertainty.

Echo news report published in Newsweek by Kahleda Rahman.
Several Republicans have raised alarm about Donald Trump's tariffs, warning they will raise prices and derail the economy.

On Wednesday—which he called "Liberation Day"—Trump announced that he would impose higher tariff rates on dozens of nations that run trade surpluses with the United States.

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, Trump said he would impose a 10 percent baseline tariff on imports from almost all countries and "reciprocal" tariffs on others, unveiling a chart showing higher duties on some of the U.S.'s most significant trading partners.

Trump said the tariffs would boost domestic manufacturing, bring in revenue and restore fairness to global trade.

Nevertheless, many economists warned that the plan can push the economy into a recession and that American consumers would end up shouldering the burden of the tariffs, as importers passed on costs in the form of 💰 higher prices. 

Later on Wednesday, the Senate passed a resolution by a 51-48 vote that would end Trump's emergency declaration on fentanyl trafficking underpinning his tariffs on Canada. Four Republican senators—Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul—voted with Democrats, highlighting cracks in GOP support for Trump's economic plans.

Still, unfortunately,😖😰 the legislation has little chance of passing the Republican-controlled House and being signed by Trump.

#ResistanceNeeded

Donald Trump tariffs will increase prices because they are a tax: This supidity puts the economy at risk of recession

Trump’s (evil) Trade War is a Major Economic and Strategic Blunder: Despite proclaiming “liberation day,” the Trump administration’s tariffs are hurting the U.S. economy, increasing inflation, and leaving America isolated on the world stage.

Echo report published in CAP (Center for American Progress)

Donald Trump’s decision to unilaterally launch a global trade war could be one of the worst economic statecraft blunders in American history. The administration has imposed tariffs to an extent that would have been unimaginable a short time ago. The rest of the world is now subject to tariffs ranging from 10 percent to 50 percent, in many cases on top of existing tariffs already in place. This was all done with little preference given to countries that are allies or whose exports are critical to support the U.S. economy. Trump’s trade war will cost American families dearly by raising consumer prices. It has already reduced their savings in the stock market. And, it is bound to fail at one thing Trump promised to do: bring back jobs.

During a Rose Garden ceremony, Donald Trump announced country-specific tariffs on dozens of countries that maintain trade surpluses with the United States and an across-the-board tariff on all countries. The baseline 10 percent tar

iff is set to take effect on April 5, and the country-specific duties will kick in on April 9. This drastic change to American trade policy occurred without the approval of Congress and via a declaration of a dubious national emergency.

Trump’s trade wars will harm Americans

Trump’s new tariffs are the largest tax hike in nearly 60 years, and a highly regressive one at that. The Budget Lab at Yale projects that Trump’s tariffs announced to date will increase U.S. prices by 2.3 percent in the near term—the equivalent to an average consumer loss of $3,800 per household. Households near the bottom of the income distribution will see a decrease in disposable income that is 2.5 times larger than that experienced by those in the top decile. Other economic analysts have updated their forecasts to predict higher inflation, lower economic growth, and a greater probability of recession this year.

Trump’s tariffs announced to date will increase U.S. prices by 2.3 percent in the near term—the equivalent to an average consumer loss of $3,800 per household.

As a result of Trump’s massive new tariffs, Americans will pay more for everyday goods:At the grocery store, tariffs on Latin American nations could push up the price of bananas, coffee and chocolate.
Wine imported from Europe could increase by up to 40 percent, putting pressure on importers and small businesses.
Prices for iPhones could increase by up to 40 percent due to the new 46 percent tariffs on Vietnam and 34 percent tariffs on China.
Japanese manufacturers of video game consoles have likely already increased prices to preempt Trump’s tariffs—and the 24 percent tariff on Japan could see a $400 console soon cost $500.
According to the American Apparel and Footwear Association, 97 percent of clothing is imported from overseas, including from Vietnam (46 percent tariff) and Bangladesh (37 percent tariff).

These price increases will be in addition to those associated with prior tariff announcements on specific goods. For example, Bank of America estimates that U.S.-assembled vehicles are set to increase by $3,285 per vehicle due to Trump’s tariffs on vehicles and auto parts, with sales expected to drop by 2.5 million this year. Goldman Sachs predicts that foreign-made cars will increase by between $5,000 and $15,000 per vehicle due to the auto tariffs. One interesting note: The administration’s new tariff measures did include a carve out—it won’t apply to the oil and gas industry—an industry whose donations strongly backed Trump’s presidential campaign.

The Trump administration’s decision to increase the average tariff rate to 22 percent is simply staggering. It is a level not seen since 1909, when tariffs were the primary source of revenue for the federal government—though that changed four years later when Congress enacted the income tax. In the speech announcing the administration’s new tariffs, President Trump highlighted the importance of tax cuts. At the same time his trade wars are hiking prices for middle-class families, he is pushing Congress to pass a tax package of at least $5.3 trillion of giveaways, which would benefit the wealthy.

Trump’s new tariffs are the largest tax hike in nearly 60 years, and a highly regressive one at that. 

Budget Lab at Yale projects that Trump’s tariffs, announced to date, will increase U.S. prices by 2.3 percent in the near term—the equivalent to an average consumer loss of $3,800 per household. Households near the bottom of the income distribution will see a decrease in disposable income that is 2.5 times larger than that experienced by those in the top decile. 

Other economic analysts updated their forecasts to predict higher inflation, lower economic growth, and a greater😓 probability of recession this year.

SignalGate is one example of Donald Trump administration incompetence but also symptomatic of growing stupidity

The Greater Scandal of SignalGate published in The New Yorker magazine by David Remnick:

For the cover of the April 7, 2025, issue, the cartoonist Barry Blitt borrows the visual imagery of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” to convey the sense of impending doom that seizes anyone who turns on the news lately. And in the wake of Signalgate, as David Remnick writes, it has become clear not only that the Trump Administration has made no attempts to disguise its autocratic intentions but also that its “qualities of malevolence, retribution, and bewildering velocity have obscured somewhat the ineptitude of its principals.”

The spectacle of incompetence and the attempts to smear a reporter are a misery; even worse is the encroaching threat of autocracy that cannot be concealed or encrypted.

Every era produces its own emblematic array of knuckleheads and butterfingers: Mack Sennett’s Keystone Cops. The Three Stooges. The 1962, Mets. Beavis and Butt-head. Wayne and Garth. In Stanley Kubrick’s Cold War classic, “Dr. Strangelove,” the fools wield apocalyptic weapons rather than custard pies. 

Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, played by Sterling Hayden, grows so feverish and paranoid about a Communist plot “to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids” that he goes “a little funny” and orders a thermonuclear strike on the Soviet Union. But such fantastical heedlessness is the province only of comic fantasy, no?

In the initial months of Donald Trump’s second Administration, the qualities of malevolence, retribution, and bewildering velocity have obscured somewhat the ineptitude of its principals. This came into sharper view with recent reports in The Atlantic, in which the magazine’s editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, tells how he was somehow added to a communal chat on the commercially available messaging system Signal, labelled “Houthi PC small group.” Sitting in his car, in a Safeway parking lot, Goldberg watched incredulously on his phone as the leaders of the national-security establishment discussed the details of bombing Houthi strongholds in Yemen.

The comedy of Goldberg’s reports resides, at least in part, in the discovery that Vice-President Vance and the heads of the leading defense and intelligence bureaucracies deploy emojis with the same frequency as middle schoolers. 

More seriously, but not astonishingly, when prominent members of the Administration were confronted with their potentially lethal carelessness, they did as their President would have them do: they attacked the character and the integrity of the reporter (who proved far more concerned about national security than the national-security adviser), and then refused to give straight answers to Congress about their cock-up and the sensitivity of the communications. 

Everyone from Cabinet members to the Trump press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, followed principles inherited by the President from the late Roy Cohn: Never apologize. And be certain to slander the messenger.

This spectacle of breezy contempt regarding questions of process and policy was humiliating, for sure, but hardly an amazement. 

In the chat, Vice-President J. D. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seem to compete in their denigrations of the Europeans. (“I fully share your loathing of European freeloading,” Hegseth tells Vance. "It’s PATHETIC.”)😓💢

And yet, much of what is so depressing about the chat is how familiar we are with the details and its spirit. Vance has, publicly and repeatedly, unburdened himself of his and Donald Trump's unwarranted disdain for Europe—most flagrantly in a speech in Munich, in February, when he lectured European leaders on their supposed failures in the realms of immigration and free speech.

This is an Administration that does not have to slip on a Signal banana peel to reveal its deepest-held prejudices and its painful incapacities. You get the sense that we would learn little if we were privy to a twenty-four-hour-a-day live stream of its every private utterance. Part of what was so appalling about Trump and Vance’s recent meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky was not just their penchant for channelling the world view and negotiating points of Vladimir Putin but their comfort in expressing them, barking them, at the Ukrainian President in front of reporters in the Oval Office.

Similarly, it does not require months of painstaking investigative reporting or a middle-aged tech fail to discover that another member of the group chat, Steven Witkoff, the President’s leading shuttle negotiator, is no more steeped in the granular details of diplomatic history and strategy than any other New York real-estate developer from the eighties in Trump’s circle. In a long interview with Tucker Carlson, following recent conversations in Moscow with Putin, Witkoff consistently parroted Russian talking points and relayed that the Russian dictator (“I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy”) had been “gracious” and gave him a “beautiful portrait” of Trump as a gift for the President. (Trump, in turn, “was clearly touched” by the painting, Witkoff reported.) Throughout, Witkoff’s grasp of the conflict was so wobbly, so Moscow-inflected, that one could almost hear the guffawing from the Kremlin. In a moment of contemplation, Witkoff admitted, “I underestimated the complications in the job, that’s for sure. I think I was a little bit quixotic in the way that I thought about it. Like, I’m going to roll in there on a white horse. And, no, it was anything but that, you know.”

Pete Hegseth is less prone to misty self-reflection. But his incompetence might have been predictable. Last December, after Trump nominated Hegseth, a weekend host on Fox News, to lead the Pentagon, Jane Mayer wrote a meticulously reported piece in this magazine on his florid background: his bouts of excessive drinking and profoundly sexist behavior on and off the job; his failures at managing enterprises somewhat larger than a dry cleaner but infinitely smaller than the Pentagon. No matter. Congressional Republicans were not inclined to deny Hegseth his appointment or to risk the President’s wrath. 

And they were similarly accommodating for another participant in the hapless Signal chat, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence.

And so the week’s scandal is rather like the ending of an O. Henry story, surprising yet inevitable. If a journalist is mistakenly dropped into a group text among the leaders of the American health bureaucracy, will we faint when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., refuses to recommend proven vaccines?

It would be unwise to dismiss the importance of secrets in this or any other Administration, but the point is that Trump and his ideological and political planners have made no secret of their intentions. While Richard Nixon tended to save his darkest confidences and prejudices for private meetings with such aides as Henry Kissinger and H. R. Haldeman, Trump gives voice to his id almost daily at the microphone or on social media: the autocratic actions intended to undermine the law, academia, and the media; the disregard for democratic partners and the affection for all manner of authoritarians; the hostile designs on Greenland, Canada, Panama, Mexico, and Europe; the ongoing attempt to purge the Republican Party of any remaining dissenters; and the constant effort to intimidate his critics and perceived enemies.

The threat of autocracy advances each day under Donald Trump, and it is a process that hides in plain sight. Some will choose to deny it, to domesticate it, to treat the abnormal as mere politics, to wish it all away in the spirit of “this too shall pass.” But the threat is real and for all to see. No encryption can conceal it. ♦

Published in the print edition of the April 7, 2025, issue, with the headline “Signal Failure.”

Donald Trump is the evil creator of economic Ruination Day: Tafiffs causing world wide economic havoc

Ruination Day: Trump’s mindless tariffs cause economic havoc

Echo opinion published in The Guardian: Perilous and chaotic, Trump’s ‘liberation day’ endangers the world’s broken economy – and him by Martin Kettle

It would be “liberation day” ❓ in the US, the White House announced. Well, well, well. We shall see. 

Ruination Day

Yet even if one puts the noise and nastiness that accompany a Donald Trump announcement to one side – in this case tonight’s pronouncement that there will be an executive order announcing “reciprocal tariffs on countries throughout the world”, a 10% tariff on the UK and 20% on the EU – the significance of the theatre is hard to miss. Whether they presage the US’s liberation, or instead the disintegration of the global trading order, Trump’s tariffs add up to an attempt to transform a badly broken economic model. And that is something that affects us all.

Trump’s announcement was awash with insult and rambling nonsense. The rest of the world had looted, raped and pillaged, had scavenged and ransacked America – shocking claims if they had come from any other US president, yet water off a duck’s back today. But the hard core was there all the same: tariffs on the whole of the rest of the world. The shutters were up.

This threatened trade war will appear to supporters – of whom there were rather fewer this week in some important US electoral contests – exactly like the Maga big bazooka he promised in his inaugural speech in January. “Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens,” he said back then. The new tariffs turn those words into realities.

Even to Trump’s opponents, though, the tariffs should be seen as the most important piece of evidence so far that he has American workers on his agenda. Where Joe Biden tried major tax, borrow and spend programmes to combat post-Covid economic precarity, Trump is deploying tariffs, ostensibly to the same purpose. There has been speculation that this will be merely tactical, to be quickly lifted or adjusted. Right now, that looks a long way off. For Trump, tariffs are not so much a negotiating tactic as a policy, a new revenue stream and a “made in the USA” commitment.

Before the announcement, markets and foreign governments were jittery. But the uncertainties have not disappeared. Listening to Keir Starmer continue to advocate a “calm pragmatic approach” does not disguise the fact that he knows, as we do, that Trump’s approach is the exact reverse. We are in a trade war now, whether we like it or not, and Trump, as the leader of the strongest economy in the world, likes it a lot because he thinks the US will win.

Things may not look so benign, however, when the rubber hits the road. It is inevitable that enthusiasm will be dulled – either among the public or in markets – when the inevitable price hikes are passed on to consumers, when inflation and the cost of mortgages begin to rise, when real wages remain flat, or when investment stalls and the US economy starts to experience a Trump slump.

All this, though, is speculation about the future, and a lot of it is for the fairly long-term future at that. It takes time for the real economic effects to be felt from a tariff wall of the kind Trump is planning. It is true that the tariffs have to be charged immediately, and that retaliatory tariffs are likely to kick in fast too. Nevertheless it will be months, if not years, before many US companies or sectors have the confidence and the cash to invest in the way “fortress America” supporters hope. Longer still, maybe, before US car workers or farmers feel truly confident about paying down their debts and spending again.

It makes perfect sense, therefore, to emphasise the uncertainties that Trump has just unleashed. All the more so because of the man himself, as well as the policy. It is hard not to feel, yet again, that part of what drove Trump’s decision was the sheer thrill he gets from his power. He glories in the way the world hangs on his every move, as the world must when its largest economy is controlled by a grudge-bearing manchild with guns who governs by decree.

Yet step back a little and it is also apparent that Trump is acting more logically than that. He is acting, albeit in a wilful and perverse manner, because the international economic model has been broken. He is responding to something real, namely a global recession that stems most immediately from the combined impact of the banking crisis of 2008-9 and the Covid pandemic of 2020. This was not something fake or imagined. Nor was it – or is it still – something felt in the US alone, but elsewhere, certainly including Europe and Britain.

The common root of today’s economic burden was the overload of debt and credit that caused the banking crash of 2008. That crash was principally confronted by spending massive amounts of public money on quantitative easing. But, just as before the crash, this was money based on credit more than on production or goods. This triggered attempts to square the circle – tax cuts in the US, austerity in Britain, pension cuts in France – which in turn provoked so-called populist responses, such as Trump’s election win in 2016, Brexit in the UK, the gilets jaunes in France. But before any of these national responses could resolve, COVID arrived, causing recessions all round, stock-market collapses and a rise in inflation.

Faced with these continuing problems, Trump’s response takes the form of tariffs. It is very uncertain whether they will work, even for the US itself. They may also trigger recessions, and the resultant tax and spend policy dilemmas elsewhere, in places such as the EU, Britain, Canada and Japan. In addition, they are likely to widen the gulf between the US and its postwar allies. 

While Trump talks of liberation, Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, talks of “independence from the USA”.

In his tariffs, Trump is clutching at straws. He may divert the US’s tariff income into orthodox neoliberal tax cuts for corporations and the rich, like him. But his approach can also be seen as an illustration of the limited strategic options that today’s democratic political leaders have at their command when faced with economic recession or, worse, depression❗

In a recent article in the London Review of Books, Perry Anderson has drawn an illuminating historical contrast with the post-depression 1930s. In the early 1930s, he writes, governments also followed economic orthodoxy with disastrous consequences. Back then, their failure forced the public works programmes of the New Deal (and of the Nazis) and then, after emerging from the abyss of war, the postwar establishment of Keynesianism. John Maynard Keynes himself, it is worth noting, was no dogmatic free-trader and was sometimes an advocate of tariffs.

In the 2020s, governments face a comparable dilemma. They, too, have been constrained by an economic orthodoxy that is increasingly difficult to sustain. They, too, have occasionally been forced into interventionist measures such as the Covid furlough scheme.

But beyond that? Trump is no New Dealer; he is the New Deal’s sworn enemy. At least he sees the need to do things differently. But his tariffs are the opposite to the new paradigm of political economy that the democratic capitalist world so obviously and urgently craves.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

Incompetence: Accidentally including a reporter in a commercial Signal app thread that included military attack plans is glaring incompetence.

Republicans such as Idaho’s Jim Risch, the U.S. Senator, should demand answers in SignalGate app breach | Opinion by the Idaho Statesman Editorial Board

Idaho's junior Senator James Risch is 81 years old

SignalGate: Whatever your politics may be, it’s hard to disagree with the assertion that accidentally including a reporter in a commercial Signal app thread that included military attack plans and classified information is a glaring example of incompetence. 

Revelations came out about how top Trump administration officials carried out a highly sensitive and detailed discussion about a military attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen on a commercial messaging app chat that inadvertently included the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg. The agrecious misstep has been the butt of several jokes, but this is no laughing matter. 

For those who have loved ones in the military, it should make your blood boil to think that the secretary of defense, the vice president, the national security adviser and other top officials were sharing sensitive military details in a commercial text messaging app that easily could have been compromised. The fact that they accidentally included a journalist in the chat just shows how careless they were.

#Imcompetence #FirePete Hegseth #FireMikeWalz #ImpeachTrumpNOW

Donald Trump hell bent on a cruelty campaign to raise tax revenue with tariffs while average Americans pay the cost

Tariffs....If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck....guess what?
"Like putting lipstick on a pig", 🐷as Sarah Palin would say.

(She gets the broken clock ⏰award for that one...a perfect description of a tariff.)
A tariff is a tax dressed up like a duck.🦆

Echo opinion letter published in The Colombian newspaper, by Gary Zacny, in Vancouver, Washington.

A tariff is a sneak tax. Just like a garden-variety tax, it results in money being taken from citizens (or consumers) and deposited in government coffers. 

Unlike a regular tax, a tariff allows the government to pretend that the money will be paid by exporters, the firms that sell and send goods to our nation. 

But the exporters will not pay the tariffs with their own funds — instead, they will raise prices to offset the expense, and those inflated prices will be paid by consumers. 

In the end, ordinary people will have less to spend and the government will have more.

Perhaps the government needs more money, perhaps we as a nation need to spend less on pizza and more on munitions, perhaps we need to pay off the enormous, debilitating national debt. 

If the nation needs more taxes, the government is right to demand more. Only don’t be sneaky about it. (Tax the 💲💵rich!)

Republicans must IMPEACH Trump Now! Tariffs and idiotic threats to take over soveriegn nations are lunacy!

Dear Senator Susan Collins:

Echo❗ Impeach Trump Now❗ Letter to the Editor Opinion
Published in Castro Valley Forum, California:

Extortion is the act of obtaining something of value from someone through threats or coercion. 

Extortion relies on creating fear or a sense of danger ⚠️in the victim. The ultimate goal of the extortionist is to gain something from the victim. This most commonly involves money, but it can also extend to coercing someone into specific ACTIONS OR INACTIONS.

Extortion is a crime. The core principle is that it is illegal to use fear tactics to exploit someone. Trump's modus operandi is extortion. He threatens people, institutions, (law firms and judges) and even other countries to achieve his evil aims. 

Trump has turned America from a country that is admired and emulated to one that is feared and loathed. Impeach Trump Now❗

From Robert Thomas, in Castro Valley, California

Donald Trump created a Pepe Le Pew foriegn policy position towards Canada: Another weird meme will live with

Echo opinion report published in The New York Times by Stacey Schiff

The Truly Terrible Idea That Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and Donald Trump All Share

Donald Trump’s creepy remarks about Canada as “our cherished 51st state” may seem to have descended, bafflingly, from the clear blue sky. But American designs on Canada have a long history, predating even our independence and featuring some very familiar names. “You are a small people,” concluded one early overture, “compared to those who with open arms invite you into a fellowship.”

The approaches have changed over time, but the courtship has invariably played out with all the grace and romance of Pepé Le Pew* on the trail of Penelope Pussycat. On several occasions, it has blown up in our faces. “Alas, Canada, we have had misfortune and disgrace in that quarter,” John Adams warned some 250 years ago. As another president now hints at a northern expansion, we might care to remember the humbling earlier forays.

In October 1774, the First Continental Congress resolved to dispatch an appeal to Quebec, which was then essentially a synonym for Canada. Over 18 eloquent pages, the letter enumerated the rights of a free people. Though it urged no acts of hostility, it reminded the Canadians that they could expect no better treatment from their common sovereign than did their American counterparts. Might they care to travel — “in order to complete this highly desirable union” — to Philadelphia for the next Congress, in May? To the high-minded rhetoric was added a prod: Canada would be wise to count the rest of North America among its “unalterable friends” rather than its “inveterate enemies.”

Though no Canadian delegates materialized in Philadelphia that May, Congress remained undeterred. A new letter went out “to the oppressed inhabitants of Canada,” this one drafted by John Jay. British rule, the letter argued, reduced Canadians to slavery and endangered their religious freedom. “We can never believe that the present race of Canadians are so degenerated as to possess neither the spirit, the gallantry, nor the courage of their ancestors,” the letter continued. How would they explain their cowardice to their children? It ended with a familiar threat: The Americans hoped the Canadians would not “reduce us to the disagreeable necessity of treating you as enemies.”

Ewwwww 👃.....Go away!

Before it adjourned in August 1775, Congress authorized an invasion of Canada. In a full-battalion-to-remind-you-of-my-love kind of missive, George Washington informed the Canadians that Benedict Arnold was heading their way with a detachment. “Come then, my brethren,” he wrote, “unite with us in an indissoluble union, and let us run together to the same goal.”

Congress was sanguine about the prospects, expecting, as Thomas Jefferson put it, “every hour to be informed that Quebec has opened its arms to Colonel Arnold.” Around the time Washington was writing his hopeful letter, Arnold and his ludicrously ill-equipped men were surviving on dead dogs and boiled cartridge belts.

Though the siege of Quebec proved a disaster, Congress continued to believe the Canadians were eager to join their revolt. “The unanimous voice of the continent is Canada must be ours, Quebec must be taken,” crowed John Adams in February. Congress that month opted for diplomacy, appointing a commission that consisted of Charles Carroll, among the wealthiest men in America and a French-speaking Catholic; his Jesuit cousin, Father John Carroll; and two members of Congress. The eldest of the group, the longtime colonial fixer and the American with the greatest experience of the wider world, was Benjamin Franklin.

The commissioners were not only to persuade the Canadians that union was in their best political interest, but also to seduce their northern neighbors with dreams of glory. It was to promise freedom of religion and establish freedom of the press. Against all odds and at some expense, a printing press also made its laborious way to Montreal. It was one illustration of the American understanding of her northern neighbors: Over 90 percent of French Canada was at the time illiterate.

The members of the commission traveled less comfortably than did the press, meeting with gale winds and ice floes. They slept in the woods, on a tented ship and in a pillaged cabin, amid weather that could freeze shut a sentry’s eyes. Franklin’s legs swelled. Boils erupted on his skin. He recognized that he had taken on an assignment that at his age — he was 70 — would likely spell his end. He wrote farewell letters to friends.

In Montreal, the delegates discovered they had embarked on the original Canadian goose chase. It was difficult to convince a people that they should place themselves under American protection when the American troops were without provisions or funds, undisciplined, underdressed and unfit for duty. Nearly half had succumbed to smallpox. Shortly after British reinforcements arrived, the commissioners reported miserably to Congress: Canadians “have suffered us to enter their country as friends” and the Americans managed to turn “their good dispositions towards us into enmity, and makes them wish our departure.”

Franklin, said to be “pitifully unwell,” returned home, accompanied by a Montreal couple who took “such liberties in taunting at our conduct in Canada,” he reported, “that it came almost to a quarrel.”

Congress appointed a committee to investigate the Canadian fiasco, producing a long list of causes but omitting the obvious: The Canadians had no interest in revolt. As Father Carroll noted, they did not believe themselves oppressed. Not only did their interests refuse to align, but also the Canadians entertained very different ideas about government. It was almost as if Canada were a foreign country.

For all the miscalculations, neither Franklin nor Washington could relinquish the idea of annexing Canada. 

Nor could the Marquis de Lafayette, who was promised a command of 2,500 men and given instructions to invade. 

Somehow, the expedition was meant to head out in February, not an ideal time for a Canadian “irruption.” No one had bothered to supply the troops with winter clothing. Congress called off the mission, which Lafayette had described as a “hell of blunders, madness and deception.” His second in command was left wondering if those who had cooked up the ridiculous plan had been traitors or idiots.

At the end of the War of Independence, before the 1783 peace negotiations, Franklin attempted a Hail Mary pass: Should the British not offer up Canada as reparations for the many towns they had burned? Surely a gesture of good will was in order. The British did not find the idea compelling.

Despite the vexed history, we seem — at least one of us seems — to be here again.

It isn’t easy to beat up on modern-day Canada, which hasn’t offended anyone since the great Turbot War of 1995 (Spain, fishing rights). 

For all the early American missteps, at least in the 18th century, the motives were clear: The northern colonists felt vulnerable to British and Indian attack. 

As Washington had it, Canada “would have been an important acquisition, and well worth the expenses incurred in the pursuit of it.” 

But, today, there is no sane motive, unless mugging a sovereign nation that happens to be both your closest friend and your most trusted trading partner constitutes reasonable foreign policy. 

Even George Washington would be hard-pressed to write an appeal to modern Canada — the land of universal health care, universal maternity leave and affordable tuition; a country with a sense of decency, gun control and superior life expectancy; a country that still teaches cursive handwriting — that could persuade it to unite with its southern neighbor. We do not appear to be running together to the same goal. Pepé Le Pew is never going to get that cat.

Already , America has submitted to remedial instruction on the cost of overstepping our northern border. In 1812, U.S. generals boasted all over again about liberating Canada, still a British colony, from “tyranny and oppression.” 

Brig. Gen. William Hull, glorying in the sight of the American flag flying over present-day Windsor, Ontario, demanded a cordial welcome for the invading force, there to emancipate. Two summers later, in a retaliatory raid, the White House went up in flames.

Stacy Schiff, the author of “The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams,” is at work on a book about Benjamin Franklin.

*A series of Warner Bros. cartoons, introduced in 1945. Depicted as a French anthropomorphic striped skunk, Pepé is constantly on the quest for love and pursuit of romance but typically his skunk odor causes other characters to run away from him.

American voters have the tools to fight Donald Trump autocracy: YES you and I have ability to make change

I was introduced to the Holocaust as a middle schooler. 

Echo guest editorial published in the Penn Bay Pilot newspaper, in MidCoast Maine/Rockland, Thomaston, Camden. 

Like any child would, I had a hard time fathoming the mass murder of so many people- over 6 million (+ plus 😔😡😨). 

I am not sure I was taught about the slippage of democratic norms, the years of capitulation and fear. I remember asking my mother why no one tried to stop it❓ She had vague answers, about it being far away, with it being hard to tell what was going on. 

Needless to say, the question lingered.

I kept that question with me while touring our nation’s Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C. more than two decades ago. I stood for many minutes in the room dedicated to America's response, reading New York Times articles from the late 1930s, finding vague information, a lack of clarity, and what I perceived as a lack of alarm.

I worry. We Americans are now in the same place of inaction and vague, unfocused alarm, even though hate, racism, and an authoritarian regime are plainly amongst us. 

No ocean separates us from this horror. Not one location in the USA has been spared the change in our method of governance.

You and I — all the American people, no matter who we voted for, or even if we voted (a third of the electorate didn’t) — have been gut-punched and rolled.

We no longer live in a democracy. The administration is on a path to an autocratic regime in which dissent, rule of law, peaceable, and non-corrupt behavior is replaced by lies, intimidation, corruption, violent destruction of institutions, and disregard for the courts — replaced by the whims of the new leaders.

The Trumpzi-ism administration has fundamentally altered the way our country is governed. This is not a time to pretend this will solve itself, or go away. It won’t. We, the American people, are the ones who’ll change what’s happening. We are now at war, and we, the American people are the troops. (According to the Oxford Dictionary, war is “any active hostility or struggle between living beings; a conflict between opposing forces and principles.”)

Now’s the time to fight. These are your weapons:your emotionally regulated self that does not quiver in fear or dive back under the covers (or get lost in doom-scrolling);

• Your attention and understanding of context and big picture — this is not a singular shift, it’s part of a global trend — read Autocracy, Inc.; On Tyranny; How Democracies Die;]
• Your voice—it’s time to be loud, and get used to speaking up for democracy;
• Your words — talk to others about what you’re seeing and feeling. Write. There is certain to be several negative comments made at the bottom of this essay. Our best work is to ignore them. 
• Your energy is precious. Instead of taking the bait from those who are gullible enough to believe that they’re actually safer, or that their eviscerated autocratic government is now more efficient, use your words and energy to chat with your neighbors, call a friend, gather at one of the many democracy meetings being held (visit indivisible.org or jointheunion.us to search for a group near you); your imagination—spend some time considering where this is all heading. 

The Trump administrations’s power grab and the moves of Project 2025, plus the capitulation of the Congress, is a sign that those currently in power in the Trump administration want to move this country permanently to an autocratic state. 

These aren’t the moves of an administration that intends to allow free and fair elections or to cede control even if elections are held. Once you’ve gone down that deep hole, consider the country you’d like to live in. Consider how you want to be governed. What role can you play in the next USA? Use your imagination to paint those pictures of the after time, when we rebuild from this destruction. There will be a resurgence of democracy.

• Your creativity: it’s well known that autocrats don’t like to be ridiculed. So write the script of an absurdist play about where these leaders wind up in their dotage; or get out your paints and depict the way you want this war to end; or channel your rage into a bakeathon whose goods you share with neighbors; or create the best protest signs; or write the next anthem (creative endeavors also bring joy, which nourishes us during the struggle); 

• Your ability to show up and protest (March 29 was national take down Tesla day teslatakedown.com; April 5 is a day of national protest about all of the administration action—Hands Off; see indivisible.org);

• Your pocketbook—he current administration is motivated by greed, using corruption and dealmaking to line their pockets. Circumvent their money grabs: boycott large corporations, shop local, reduce your consumption overall. Consider delaying paying taxes until you’re convinced those dollars are being legally spent. 

• Your trust in yourself—your voice matters, your behavior makes a difference;

• Your trust in an inclusive, USA of the future — keep up your practices that promote diversity, many voices, the role of women; refuse to diminish people to “other;”

• Your community and your trust in your neighbors—do what you can to tighten those bonds;

• Your local government—get involved, inquire about your community’s plans for emergency notifications, mutual aid, and formation of neighborhood teams to help when crises strike; 

• Your belief in our democracy, and our ability to come together to win it back.

We’ll overturn this administration and win this war — non-violently, with the world’s strongest force: human hearts and minds pulling together to serve the future of our one planet.  

I’ll see 👀 you out there.

From Molly Mulhern lives in Camden, Maine

Resistance clarion call! Donald Trump is a worse narcissist than we ever thought he could be, his cruelty flashbacks to Nazi Germany

Trump is worse this time❗

Echo opinion letter published in the Idaho Statesman in Boise Idaho:

The foundation beneath our feet is shaken by the arrogant, constantly repeated MAGA cult continuing big lies, the daily unchecked power of executive orders that silence agencies, the firing of inspector generals that safeguard power that is misused and the narrow confirmation of a totally unqualified Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense.

We are witnessing the disruption of millions of migrant lives waiting for asylum without discretion as they are hunted in fields, schools, workplaces, and churches. Wielding his now presidential signature to suspend membership to world organizations, Trump has silenced the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) and canceled cancer research, pardoned violent hoodlums that killed capital police officers with blatant disrespect for the rule of law. 

We the people of this nation shudder and dread what is coming. And still, his bloated ego bad-mouths a prayer for mercy at the National Cathedral by Archbishop Mariann Edgar Budde (Episcopal Diocese of Washington).

National Cathedral 

Trump threatens other countries with the extortion of tariffs if they do not cave to his whims. This all in one week. This singular dismantling of our government as we know it. This testing the rule of law. These threats that create chaos, discord and further division. This toxic disregard for the 14th Amendment that ensures birthright citizenship for children born in the United States. This narcissistic grab of unchecked power planned by the unelected personnel like Elon Musk and the ghoul Russel Vaught that created Project 2025. Trump is not making America great again. Instead, his cruelty is putting into play motions that will serve the wealthy and extend power to a few on the backs of the working many❓ 

Unacceptable! Intolerable! Resist! Regroup! Reclaim! Disobey! Do not give up hope! 

From Joye Lisk, in Eagle, Idaho

Elon Musk is colliding with Holocaust denialism and must be severely reprimanded for his irresponsible Nazi behavior

Echo opinion letter published in the Idaho Statesman newspaper in Boise Idaho:

Musk thinks Germany should forget the sins of Nazism❓ Maybe so he can reenact them | Opinion

Elon Musk tells German far-right crowd the nation should move beyond "past guilt" ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day😓😨🕎✡️

I’m seeing shades of Adolf. The de facto president (Elon Musk) addressed a far-right group in Germany and told them to get past the Nazi problem. 

Did he mean forget about that time or deny it happened or it wasn’t as bad as perceived or as what❓

A group of four uniformed officers marching in a parade of SA stormtroopers, or 'brownshirts', in Berlin, Germany, circa 1929. The stormtroopers were a paramilitary organisation of the German Nazi Party, playing a key role in the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1920s and 1930s. (Photo by Henry Guttmann/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Look what Trump/Musk and devotees have unleashed. Trump in his complete forgiveness to all the insurrection/riot idiots created the immediate comparison of Nazi Brown Shirts, subsequent SS Troops, the Gestapo. Previously we all said it mustn’t happen again, but it certainly seems that it is happening. Why❓ 

From Janette McFarland, in Fruitland, Idaho